I started these a long time ago, and just found them in one of my art drawers this past week. It seemed better to finish them and send them out into the universe than to move them to our new place. :oD

Currently, our new place is empty except for large finished paintings, and a cypress Christmas tree in a container. (Living trees!)

This will change today, after we begin filling it with boxes. I'm already dreaming of having a nice log burning and crackling in the wood stove next week, just in time for holiday cheering. Yay.

If you asked me what color I saw my soul living in, I would tell you it was a heavenly teal-aqua-turquoise-teal-watery-milky-aqua-teal color. I imagine myself just floating endlessly through that color. ahhhhh

Except... well, I don't know. This year I've noticed a distinct color that keeps popping up as I paint. I don't intend to paint with this color, I just find myself doing it, again and again and again. It's odd because, I really never liked this color growing up. At all.

We needed to do some re-potting this weekend in order to give our beloved plumeria and orange trees a chance to cope with the trauma of fresh soil and bigger containers before the big move in a couple of weeks, so I took the opportunity to plant a few herbs as well.

For the first time in my life, I will have an actual kitchen window to set herbs on. Well, I mean, I've had windows in the kitchen before, but I'm talking about the kind of window that has a shelf sticking out towards the outside, a garden window of sorts. ::squeal::

I love herbs, and I love growing herbs. I first started when I was about 16 or 17, when I became obsessed with making my own herbal products, which I was pretty good at I'll have you know. But, anyway, I planted some herbs, and it was wonderful. Apparently the seaside clay soil in my mom's backyard was perfect for lavender and rosemary, because those things took off like a crazed herbal science project and became glorious smelling plant monsters in no time. There was no way I could possibly use so much, and we certainly didn't trim it back enough to keep it from being humongous. Then, when the bees and spiders and faeries took up residence in the 2 gigantic bushes, I was too afraid to cut anything from it, so we just sort of gave it to them.

The previous containers of herbs on my soon-to-be-ex patio are all dead now (my patio gets an awe inspiring amount of direct sunlight in the summer) and I didn't bother to plant new ones, because nothing small can survive there.

But now, it's a brave new world of herb growing. I'm so excited. I've never grown chives before, but I think we eat them even more than basil (gasp) so I'm super eager to see what happens.

yay!

I also just started a fuchsia painting, because even with all the boxes I'm tripping over, I couldn't help but do some art. FUCHSIA. I don't know if it will stay that way, but that's what color it is now.

When I started working on this painting, I instinctively knew that somehow it was the beginning of a new phase in my work. Not necessarily in style or focus, but I've been particularly interested in what I can accomplish with texture and super thick paint. It takes an incredibly long time to build up, but I'm pleased with how it looks. The first image was taken in that awesome light I was blathering about in a previous blog post, where the sun shines through the windows, casting great shadows across the painting. It looks even more striking on a piece like this that has great texture, and really brings out the depth of the acrylic.

Obviously I'm going to have to increase my supply-buying in order to continue painting this way.

The color of this painting represents the light as it is before dawn, when it's still dark out, but the sun is clearly approaching. It's a very glowing light, very mysterious, and shifts between blue and purple as though it's liquid or fog, even though it's actually crystal clear. It's really a very beautiful, magical light, one that I rarely see because it's not in my nature to be up at that time, unless I've stayed up from the night before.

That's actually when I really experienced this light recently, in a way that inspired me to paint it. It was in June, and we had just returned home from an incredibly emotional and sad experience. It was when Meat died. I took notice of the light, in the same way that I took notice of the rain hitting the windshield on the night my grandfather died. I always notice the environment very distinctly in situations like that. It's almost slowed down, with the volume turned up.

Anyway, on that morning, the light was beautiful. It wasn't enough to call the color of the sky Lavender, although I've been referring to this piece as my "lavender moon" painting. It wasn't even the sky itself that I was looking at. The light was everywhere. It was in the trees, on the wall, and throughout the apartment. I sat and watched it for awhile to really absorb the color I was seeing, and to lock it in my memory as vividly as everything else I was feeling in that moment.

Hey, look, there's Chelsea! It's cool when you're on the front page. You get like 17 million views. :o)

Also, I wanted to show you this Color Study I just finished, but I ended up selling it before I blogged about it. I love it when that happens. (yay) Check out that texture. As I say in the listing, this was really more a texture/phosphorescent study, but either way it was totally done in my very favorite colors.

A couple of days ago there was this really really awesome light coming through the windows and I ran around frantically taking pictures of every painting in the house before it went away. It made huge shadows across the texture, showing each piece in a new light. (Um, so to speak.) I'll post more of them soon so you can see what I mean.

It also made my hair look dark and my lips look pink. It was an awesome, awesome light.

Joyous was one of those that I started a million years ago, stopped for some reason, and then picked up and finished again. I guess I was waiting for the right color, which obviously was yellow. Happy happy yellow.

They are both very sandy.

My newest show piece is nearly almost practically finished, and I have a few more small pieces to list in my shop next week, depending on how elated or depressed I am after Tuesday.

Yeesh, I've been workin' lately. I need to start clearing out my studio to make room for bigger (meaning, huge) commission and show pieces that I'm starting. I haven't done two 4ft x 5ft pieces at the same time in my little apartment, since.... well, since last year, for my last show. Somehow it's baffling that I was able to do that at all, especially since I have more room now! Ah well. That's the fun of it. Although, I may have to delay any other commissions that size until after the show, unless we move into a bigger place. Woo studio fun! I still have to fit smaller, but still large show pieces in there too. Hmm.

I'm not really a frozen yogurt person, or an ice cream person for that matter. I'm not saying I dislike sweet frozen dairy, exactly. I just don't really get the obsession some people have. It's dairy. That's frozen. And sweet. I don't know. People really go nuts over this sh-stuff though, and I've heard many stories of lines out the door. Even today, we had to hover forever behind a group of people who needed to get a little bit of every single flavor available to them, all in one cup. All in one huge, massive, multi-colored frozen yogurt extravaganza.

I got Taro and Green Tea, because why wouldn't I, and a bunch of mixed fruit. I was really more impressed with the fruit selection than anything else. They had fresh berries! Rad. Kiwi and mangoes and strawberries and blueberries and blackberries and ahhhhh! Fruit.

I'll save the fruity pebbles and lucky charms for you crazy fruitnuts out there who put cereal on your desserts. (I can judge you, because I haven't tried it.)

Except for the buffet style toppings bar, which brings out my germaphobia and generally freaks me out (I hate buffets) it was pretty good experience. I even promised Colin I would take him.

Not like, permanently. Just sometimes, for a day or so. I mean, I guess it's not realistic to get in good painting time every single day of the week, or else I'd end up doing *nothing* else. Especially when I already do paint almost every single day of the week. For like 6-10 hours a day. Whew.

Being an artist is weird.

Being a politician is more weird. I'm glad I'm not a politician.

The funny thing is, whenever I decide to accept my non-interest in painting, and declare an "evening off," I get about 3 hours into it before I become bored and start thinking of something entertaining to do, something fun. Inevitably, I arrive at the novel idea of: "I know! I'll paint something!!!"

Giant Crystal Cave on the National Geographic Channel tonight. (9pm Eastern / 6pm Pacific) (and also again at 9pm Pacific.)

"A team of scientists explore a Mexican cave filled with giant crystals; some of the largest ever discovered. With temperatures near 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and over 80 per cent humidity, the cave is one of the deadliest environments on earth."

Honestly, I just wanted to perfect some things from my last batch and play around more. Also, it gives me something to do while my other 11 paintings dry and I'm watching politics or science shows. :o)

I'm sure I'll finish them up and list them on Etsy soon enough. I found out it's a wonderful way to use my sketches. Well, granted, I just discovered this when I did that last one on the bottom there. But still. Color Studies can get too complicated sometimes, and really, I like to use Color Studies in a longer, more drawn out way, to experiment freely with lots of different ideas before calling them finished. This is like a rough draft to a Color Study.

Really, I didn't ever think that I would enter the ACEO world. Generally I prefer to paint bigger. BIGGER! But, well, I don't know. Colin has these cute little pre-cut miniature watercolor papers lying around that he sometimes paints on. One day, I couldn't help but snag a few, just to see what it would be like. Did I mention they're miniature? 2.5 x 3.5 inches. That's like the size of a playing card. ACEOs are pretty big on Etsy, and I guess in the larger (ha) art world in general. It's like a tiny representation of your art. And, I guess, the fact that they're so little is pretty novel in itself. I mean, I had to fit an entire painting on an itty bitty little piece of paper. Incredible.

Anyway, so I actually ended up selling 3 of the 4 I listed in the time it took me to list them on Etsy before getting over here to make a blog post about it. So, there's one left! That red and yellow one that's at the bottom of the list there.

It will come in a plastic sleeve, and be mailed with a postcard of Interrupt's. Yay.

Have I ever mentioned that I like disaster movies? Not like I think they're some high form of cinematic art or anything. Quite the opposite. I find them entertaining for their very ridiculousness. What can I say? They're awesome. Things shaking, comets slamming into planets, tidal waves. Awesome.

Hey, some people like zombie movies.

Like, just now, I noticed something called "10.5 Apocalypse" was on the Sci-Fi channel, and I had to turn it on. The title alone was enough. See, now, some disaster movies will be dramatized stories about things that *could* happen (even if it's unlikely) such as an asteroid hitting the earth. That could happen.

A 10.5 earthquake? That isn't scientifically possible. Read your pamphlet on how the Richter Scale works. Well, assuming we're not talking about the earth cracking in half or something. I knew immediately that this was going to be particularly entertaining. Granted, I just turned it on, I'm not even positive what's happening. They already mentioned something about the Gulf of Mexico flooding the Mississippi and separating the United States into 2 parts. YES.

Oh, wouldn't you know it. That poor nurse covered by falling debris and slot machines and pool tables in a Las Vegas casino just found out yesterday that she was pregnant. Darn. What timing.

Ahhhh, sweeeeet. George Washington's face just shattered and fell to the ground at Mt. Rushmore. AWESOME.

It's kind of freaking me out that every person who has an important medical, science, or government related job in this movie looks to be my age or younger. Seriously? Are they qualified to be doing this?

Look, I could have told you that rappelling down a broken elevator shaft during the apocalypse was a bad idea. Duh.

....And they just advertised "NYC: Tornado Terror" on later tonight. Heh.

This painting has a deceptively large amount of lines and dots, something that I realized after I'd been painting them for what felt like years. After finishing Enlightenment, (actually it was started before I even finished Enlightenment) I was compelled to do something really orange and warm colored. It's like each new painting is a response to the previous one. The orange of this piece really contrasts with the teal of my last one. That's what was exciting to me while painting it. Orange!

I say "my last one" as though Enlightenment is the last piece I finished, which is not remotely true, since I've completed bazillions of smaller pieces since then. My art brain works on a strange, fractal-like, ripple system, in which different things influence different paintings, and although my larger pieces are an on-going conversation with each other, my smaller ones are like the fragmented echoes of the conversation I'm having with my larger ones.

Hmm. I'm not sure how to reword that. Art Brain. Ripples. Echoes. There you have it.